Truth or Dare
by Dancing in the Minefield
Summary: Or, Rachel Learns How Badly Mortal Games Mix With Demigods In A Confined Space. Because I've lost my common sense and have attempted to force logic on this demented idea. For all of you headdeskers out there.
1. In Which Dire Circumstances Are Revealed

**I just finished reading Musafreen's Guide to Writing PJO Fanfiction, and suddenly got the urge to write a Truth or Dare fic because she bashed it. Sort of. Bashed it, that is. Plus, I've headdesked way too many times after bulldozing my way through one of these. So this is my attempt at a Truth or Dare. Not a parody, but something that might actually have some kind of logic to it. Unbeta-d and more or less unedited, so excuse the occasional grammar mistake, if you would.**

"Hey, Rachel, what do normal people do?"

Rachel's pencil, which was sharpened enough to make any demigod's weapon jealous, paused in its doodling on her sketchbook. The redhead looked up, one eyebrow cocked at her friend, who had had her nose buried in blueprints up until a few moments ago. "I don't know," Rachel said at last, grinning. "I'm not normal. I spout prophecies every two weeks or so. Oracle of Delphi?"

"Yeah, but before that," Annabeth pressed, leaning over to look at said Oracle of Delphi's doodles. "You must've had some mortal friends you hung out with before we Greek freaks invaded your life. Those eyes are scarily big." She tapped a bobblehead version of Apollo with her pencil eraser.

Rachel frowned. "I'll add sunglasses. Gods know he needs them." She sketched a pair of dark glasses with the Gucci logo on the corner.

"Nice touch. How about bellbottom pants?" Annabeth settled back into her chair and promptly burst into laughter a minute later as Rachel held up her sketchbook for her to see. "Erase them, erase them. It's horrifying!"

"I'll say," Rachel snorted between giggles, furiously rubbing the end of her pencil across the lines. She blew eraser shavings off the paper, earning a shake of the head from Annabeth as they went flying onto her sketch of Olympus's salad bar.

"So what do normal people do?" Annabeth asked, eyebrows raised innocently as she shifted her gaze back to her blueprints.

"Eat. Sleep. Breathe," Rachel replied vaguely. In truth, she'd always buried herself in her art, helping in fundraisers, entering the talent show in an attempt to distance herself from being the Dare heiress. She'd never really bothered with poking her nose into the business of other teenagers, because she figured their life couldn't be any more interesting than hers.

"Yeah, but abnormal people," Annabeth waved a hand between them to indicate her point, "do those things too. I'm talking about anything besides homework, chores, monster fighting, and art."

"That leaves eat, sleep, and breathe," Rachel repeated, grinning as Annabeth accidentally tossed her pencil away by throwing her hands up in frustration. "I don't know, hang out downtown? Be all lovey-dovey with their dates? Watch TV?"

"Doesn't anyone play sports anymore?" Annabeth's voice was muffled from bending over to look for her pencil under the table.

"That's my shoe."

"Sorry, Rach. Hey, I see it over there. Mind getting it for me?"

"Here," Rachel said, dropping the pencil on the table. Annabeth came back up, blowing blonde curls out of her face.

"Thanks. So, sports?"

"Between a steady diet of chips and soda and a race to see who can be the biggest couch potato, sports have become urban legend." Rachel nodded solemnly. "You know, I have heard of party games. Never actually played any, though. Twister, Spin the Bottle, Truth or Dare, junk like that."

Annabeth tapped her pencil against her bottom lip in thought. "I'm suddenly glad I'm a demigod."

"I dunno about that." Rachel turned back to her sketch, brushing a red curl out of her face. "Hey, do you think his head matches his ego yet?" she asked, holding up her pad again. Bobblehead Apollo grinned on the paper, blissfully unaware of his outfit.

Annabeth contemplated the drawing. "Nah," she decided. "Scale it up by another inch."

* * *

><p>"I don't even know why I'm here," Rachel complained. "It's not like <em>I<em> have to hide from – OW! What the – Nico? What are you doing?"

The son of Hades slid off his painful position on her lap and down the side of Zeus's Fist with groan. The grass around him turned brown and started smoking. His eyes were tightly closed, and his breathing was shallow for a couple of moments until he pulled himself up with a shake of his head.

"Why are you guys all up there?" he asked blearily, looking up at the group of demigods gathered on the pile of boulders. "Man, I haven't shadow travelled that much since I ran into the Great Wall . . . That hurt . . ."

"Which part?" Percy asked in concern, looking down from his perch a little below Rachel. "The shadow travelling you just did, or running into the Great Wall?"

"Both. Came from Italy just now. What _are_ you guys doing up there anyway?" Nico repeated, picking his sword off the ground and sheathing it. He started walking a circle around Zeus's Fist, pointing at each demigod in turn and muttering. "Percy, hey Rachel, you two," he nodded at the Stolls, "Piper, you I don't remember, Katie, Annabeth, Leo, you're in my spot," he finished, stopping next to a small but sheer rock face with an accusing glare.

Leo grinned. "Sorry, bro. You can have this spot." He patted a space next to him that amounted to three square inches of flat rock. Nico stuck out his tongue childishly, but pulled himself onto the tiny space with ease.

"Well," Rachel began, snapping her fingers for Nico's attention. "These guys are hiding from the Ares cabin because the Stoll doofuses did something to them worse than their norm for the Demeter cabin, from what I hear." Katie Gardner gave her an approving nod. "I'm just here for kicks."

Nico held up a finger. "Wait a sec. This isn't exactly off-limits to the Ares cabin, so it's not like they can't come charging in to beat your butts." Rachel liked how he said 'your' rather than 'our'.

"Last time the Hunters were here," Annabeth interjected, "Thalia officially declared this whole clearing 'her territory'," she explained with air quotes. "She's pretty much only given permission to Percy and I to come and go as we want –"

"Let me guess," Nico interrupted with a smirk. "As long as there's no 'gross stuff'?" He mimicked her earlier air quotes.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "That's a mild way to put it. You should've seen her list her rules – it took her a whole ten minutes to go over every single detail about what –"

"Thanks," Nico said with a pained look on his face. "Anybody else care to explain?" Annabeth huffed and crossed her arms, leaning down to murmur something in Percy's ear.

Leo picked up. "So when Clarisse hunted down the Stolls, they pointed the finger at me, if you can believe it," he shook his head solemnly.

"He came crying to me," Piper continued, nudging Leo with the tip of her shoe. "Asked me to use special pleading on the Ares cabin. Which is ridiculous, because I can't persuade a whole cabin of bloodthirsty war god duplicates to drop their weapons like _that._" She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

"You didn't even try!" Leo complained.

"It wasn't possible in the first place," Piper retorted. "So, since nobody wants a bunch of Ares kids out for their guts, Annabeth was kind enough to help me with her amazing braniac skills. Poor Katie here got dragged into the mess by Travis, and we have no idea why you're here," she informed him.

Nico shrugged. "Like I said, I was in Italy. Gods, their pizza is amazing." There was a collective groan from the group, and an "I'm famished!" from Connor, followed by a slap upside the head from Katie. "Then a hydra had to show up and ruin my fun. So I made my totally awesome and amazing escape, and walked in on this." He waved a hand vaguely.

"More like fell into my lap in on this," Rachel scoffed, rubbing her knee. "You have bony elbows."

"Don't blame me. Blame Sally for refusing to let me eat her cookies." Nico stuck out his bottom lip.

"She only did that because the plate disappeared in two seconds while she went to water the plants," Percy shot back, looking at his stomach resentfully. "I didn't even get five."

"You get cookies on a three day basis. I get cookies on a three _month_ basis. It's not like I can actually enjoy the food at _my_ family dinners." Leo patted Nico's shoulder in sympathy.

"So how long are we camping out here anyway?" Rachel asked, looking at Annabeth. Her friend was sitting cross-legged at the crest of the boulders, leaning back on her hands. She checked her way-too-expensive watch; it was already four in the afternoon. "'Cause if I'd known, I would've brought my sketchbook just so I can amuse myself with Bobblehead Apollo."

"Best case scenario, a couple hours." Annabeth blew a stray curl out of her face. "Worst case scenario, the Ares cabin finds us, surrounds us, and demand that we sacrifice Leo, Travis, and Connor, which might take a couple days."

"Because you'd miss my awesomeness," Leo boasted, pressing his hand to his chest with an overly smug smile.

Piper gave him a kick. "Shut it, hotshot."

"Gee, that's nice to know _after_ you told me I have to stay," Rachel commented. "Do you think hoping for the best case scenario is going to jinx it?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if it did," Percy muttered.

She rolled her eyes. "Thanks so much for the vote of confidence."

"No problem."

This was followed by an awkward pause, during which the demigods and Rachel looked around at the others with identical glum faces.

Katie cleared her throat. "Well then. What now?" Travis settled his head in her lap, stretching out his legs and kicking more than a few people in the process.

"Sleep," Nico mumbled, slipping off his ledge and collapsing on the grass, fast asleep.


	2. Let the Demigods Argue

"Okay. Let me go over the list again. I am bored, famished, starved, sleepy, starved, headache-y, cold –"

"Blame yourself for not wearing socks."

"Have a bunch of cramps, numb in my –"

"Don't want to hear it."

"Okay then. Moving on. My left foot has pins and needles in it, my arm feels dead, and . . . Hm. I've run out." Connor yawned and stretched, flopping down on the rocks so that Travis's stomach served as his pillow. The other Stoll brother only snored in response. "Oh, and I'm tired."

"I think you missed one," Katie muttered. "You've contracted diarrhea of the mouth."

Rachel rolled her eyes, shifting her legs. She was wide awake thanks to her catnap earlier. Two agonizing hours had passed, during which the demigods' general schedule was argue, then attempt to release energy by moving around (it had stopped when nearly everyone ended up on the ground), and then sleep. They were now in what she deemed Twitchy Mode, where they sat and fiddled with whatever they could find.

She was pretty sure they'd go into Argue Mode soon enough.

She heard Percy's sword scratching against the rock on one side of her, and Annabeth's knife on the other. The two of them had started a sparring session earlier, but had finished it quickly when they'd accidentally sent their blades through Rachel's legs, thankfully without any damage.

Squinting, she could see Leo fiddling with nuts and bolts and pipe cleaners, Piper alternately tracing patterns on the rock with her fingers and playing with the braids in her hair, and Nico recreating that fable with the turtle and the rabbit with skeletons.

"OH MY GODS."

Rachel ducked Annabeth's sneaker as her friend leapt up with her knife in hand, nearly falling off the boulders. Instantly, every other demigod that was awake was up as well, the ones who had weapons with them getting them out. The ones who didn't picked any random heavy object around them that was fit for throwing. Rachel's hand went to her back pocket, where she kept a very handy little bronze pocketknife.

Percy edged past her quickly and bent over so that his head was level with Annabeth's sneaker, trying to see what she was so worked up about. "What am I supposed to be looking at here?"

Annabeth was still frozen with her foot raised, staring at a spot at the edge of the rock. "Sp – spi – IT'S MOVING."

Rachel leaned forward precariously to look at what Annabeth's knife was pointing to, and promptly froze. Because "it" was a spider about the size of Bobblehead Apollo's head, with spindly legs and eight beady eyes that _looked_ at her. And twitched.

And the next thing she knew she was stumbling backwards, nearly losing her balance with a shriek building up in her throat. Piper's arm shot out to keep her from face-planting into the grass, which looked like a long way down.

"Get it get it get it!" Annabeth seemed to have found her voice. A constipated look was starting to form on Percy's face from her vice-like grip on his arm.

"What?" Leo scrambled up from his spot, eager to get into the commotion. His eyebrows raised when he spotted the spider, and he raised his hands, grinning. "I got this, peeps. Flame on!" A tiny blast of fire shot from his finger and hit the spider. Rachel swore she could see it spasming as it fell away from the rock.

Percy coughed and waved away the acrid stench of burning spider. "Man, you could've burned my face," he scolded.

"No problem," Leo grinned.

Annabeth slowly sat back down on the rock with a shudder. "Ew."

"Ew is right," Rachel agreed. "I don't think I'll ever eat barbecue again."

"How long has it been?" Piper burst out, throwing her hands up.

Leo dodged to the side. "Whoa, beauty queen, watch the nails."

"My nails are nothing. You should take a look at Drew's. I think she cuts them every other year." Piper examined her nails just to be sure, nodding in satisfaction. Rachel held her own hand up to the light, but they were perfect ovals, like usual. Being the Dare heiress had its minor advantages.

"They're manicured, though," Leo said thoughtfully.

Connor inspected his nails. "They're also sharp. Remember how she threatened us after that golden mango business? Travis?" He glanced down, only just noticing that his brother was snoring away. "Wake up, man!"

"Huh?" came the groggy reply. Travis raised his head and looked around, and started rolling over to his other side – and kept rolling as gravity took it upon itself to give them all a painful fate. Nico, Leo, and Piper provided a temporary roadblock, until first Leo was pushed off, dragging Piper down with him. Poor Nico didn't stand a chance against Travis on his own.

_CRUNCH._

"Ooh," Rachel leaned forward, careful to brace herself with her hands. Next to her, Annabeth winced at the scene below them. "That's some pileup down there." She, Rachel and Percy made no move toward the jumble of people. Connor just snickered, while Katie shook her head defeatedly.

"Ah man, you crushed the rabbit!" Nico complained, untangling himself from the pile of groaning limbs. He inspected the gritty dust on his black clothes that used to be the lead role in the Tortoise and the Hare: Return from the Dead.

"Yeah? The turtle crushed my spine," Leo moaned. He pointed a finger at Rachel. "Yo, Rach – you foresee any chance of my spine keeping its normal shape?"

"I say fifty-fifty," she replied mildly, more interested in the patterns the people rolling around in the grass left behind. Maybe that would be her new masterpiece, so creatively named 'Grass'. "Go ask Will. I mold clay, not skeletons."

Leo clambered to his feet, stretching with some ominous cracks. "You want me to be electrocuted Leo on a spear?" he asked disbelievingly. He turned to Nico, clearly mouthing 'loony'. Nico smirked and raised his eyebrows at Rachel.

"You know what else I foresee?" she added loudly. "You, jumping off a high place yelling 'Flame on!'"

Piper shrugged and gave Leo a charming smile in response to his look. "It could happen."

"Could not," Leo pouted, crossing his arms.

Connor looked down in interest. "Dude, that would be so cool! Haven't you ever jumped off high places before? And on fire, too – you could so go 'Burn!' on Percy." A tiny ball of water hit him in the face at that statement, soaking him from the waist up. "What the heck, man?" he sputtered, shaking his head like a wet dog. Everyone leaned away from him.

"You asked for it," Percy said, grinning good-naturedly.

"Oh, yeah?" Leo challenged, dusting off his hands. "Watch this!" A ball of flame burst to life in his mouth, and he took aim like he was going to throw a baseball.

Travis jumped up in front of Connor with his hands up in surrender. "Don't barbecue my bro, man!"

"As much as I hate to say this, don't barbecue my boyfriend," Katie put in. Leo stuck out his tongue at her, but quickly pulled it back in and extinguished his fire when the grass started growing and wrapping around his ankles.

"Fine, fine," he muttered, then brightened. "Hey, Perce, power fight? My fire against your water?"

"Bring it."

Twelve seconds later, Leo looked like he'd been squashed by a water balloon the size of a canoe, and Percy looked like he'd been through the kitchens with the lava spray guns on full blast. On either side of the clearing were a patch of muddy grass and a circle of ashy dirt.

Rachel coughed, waving the smoke away as Percy clambered back onto the rock next to her. "I can't believe you guys actually did that."

"I can." Annabeth poked her boyfriend with her knife. "Your shirt's been barbecued."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Percy asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

"To stay away from me, so mine doesn't end up the same way." To prove her point, Annabeth ran a finger down the front of his shirt and held it up to show the ashiness on it. Percy stuck out his tongue.

"Hey, guys, since we're gonna be stuck here for a while more," Piper began, "How about we entertain ourselves with something that won't KILL EACH OTHER?"

And they were back in Argue Mode.

Rachel blew out a long breath. "Well, what do _you_ guys do for fun?"

"Fiddle."

"Steal."

"And sleep."

"Oh, yeah. And kiss my awesome girlfriend senseless."

"Actually, I seem to remember it being the other way around. Watch the flowers."

"Read and design."

"Skateboard. Hang out underwater, sometimes." Percy looked around at the faces turned to him. "What?"

"So _that's_ where the two of you go," Connor crowed, pointing at him and Annabeth. "Ew. Never mind. I don't want to know what you guys have been up to. Actually, I'm never going to the lake again." Percy facepalmed, though Rachel could see that both his and Annabeth's ears were bright red.

"Surf," Piper continued. Everyone turned to look at her.

"Piper, you surf?" Rachel asked.

Piper tipped her head from side to side in a 'sort of' manner. "More like wipe out every time I get on the curls, but yeah, I surf. Spend time with my dad, and all."

Attention shifted to Nico, who was the only one that hadn't spoken yet. He glanced around in the sudden expecting silence. "I laugh at other people's misfortunes," he said, still looking at the pieces of bone, which were now both wet and scorched.

"Alrighty then," Rachel said at last, breaking the silence that had followed Nico's statement. "Since we can't exactly do much of that in a twenty by twenty foot space that's mostly rock . . ."

"What about those party games you mentioned the other day?" Annabeth interrupted. "It's not like we have anything better to do."

"Does this look like a party to you?" Connor asked, waving his hands around wildly to indicate what he was saying. He did have a point, Rachel noticed, since most of the expressions screamed 'Seriously? Get me out of here without ending up skewered by the Ares cabin!'

"No," Nico deadpanned from his corner.

Rachel frowned, turning back to Annabeth. "You really want to play Twister on a pile of boulders?" She shrugged. "Fine by me."

"We don't have a mat," Leo pointed out. "And I don't want dirt in my face, because I bet somebody's gonna be kicked off in the first five seconds." He glared pointedly at the Stolls, who made faces back at him.

"All the better." Travis rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Annabeth rolled her eyes as Katie cuffed him over the head. "No, I was talking about Truth or Dare. Can't be any worse than monsters. Probably."

"That could be dangerous," Katie said, a grin spreading over her face. "And an _excellent_ way to beat these two up. I'm all for it!" Travis and Connor immediately scrambled across the rock to seat themselves in front of Percy's feet, as he was pretty much neutral in the whole situation.

Rachel considered propping her feet up on one of their heads (they looked the same from the back, so she couldn't tell which was which), because her legs were getting cramped from sitting on one position for so long, but decided against it. Since she was neutral as well, there wouldn't be anything stopping them from booby-trapping her cave to resemble a glorified minefield.

It still felt weird calling her home a cave.

"It's still a better idea than lobbing water bombs and fireballs at each other!" Piper's voice reached an octave usually deemed not possible to reach, even during exasperated shrilling.

Leo clapped his hands to his ears. "Geez, beauty queen. First the nails and now the eardrums? You're on a roll today."

"Shut it, Valdez."

"Okay, okay, okay." Percy sliced his hand through the air to cut the conversation short. "Truth or Dare?" he confirmed with Annabeth. "Okay. All for it?"

Pretty much all the hands went up – Katie, with a wicked grin, herself, Annabeth, most likely from boredom, Piper, who looked relieved, Leo, and the Stolls, who were probably out for any blackmail information they could get. Even Nico gave an optimistic shrug.

Percy pointed at each hand in turn, counting up the total even though there was no need. He pointed to himself with a satisfied nod, earning a snort from Annabeth. "Truth or Dare it is. Who wants to go first?"

"I will," Piper volunteered unexpectedly, cutting off a couple of others who also had their mouths open. "Leo?"

"Dare!" He fist pumped the air.

"Dare you to climb to the top of the boulders – over there where Rachel's sitting – and jump off yelling 'Flame on!'"

**I'll get to the game next chapter, but I still have to sort out some ground rules and whatnot. ****For those of you who don't know how wonderful I am about updating, that means it could be anywhere from tomorrow to next week to next year. So you shouldn't get your hopes up, lest I squash them mercilessly like I would squash cockroaches and grasshoppers.**

**So I guess that means your hopes are cockroaches and grasshoppers?**

**Yeah... maybe that's not the best analogy... Anyway, reviewers get a flaming Leo in the color of their choice. **


	3. In Which 'Thungs' Are Bitten

Rachel scooted over, patting the space next to her she'd just made. Leo shied away from what was probably the mad grin on her face, only to run into Piper, who had the same devilish smile.

"Tick tock, hotshot," she teased.

"Seriously should've seen that one coming," Leo muttered, making no move up the boulders.

Rachel laughed. "Already did." She gave Piper a wink. "Come on up, repair boy." Leo mumbled something in Spanish and gave her the evil eye.

"Don't make me use special pleading on you," Piper said patronizingly. Leo crossed his arms.

Annabeth leaned over to Rachel, "Now who's the one threatening to kill people?" She laughed and shoved the blonde playfully.

"You know, these might actually be fun," Rachel admitted. She'd never been one for girly party games, because early on in her private middle school she'd already divided the world into two groups: the snooty rich people (like her parents and their coworkers) and the shallow girls whose combined brains wouldn't fill a teaspoon. And then she had had to add a third group for the Greek mythology, which had pretty much turned everything on its head.

Unsurprisingly, everything made much more sense upside down.

"Fine, fine, I'll do it. And I'll survive!" Leo pointed to the sky randomly like he was imitating a super hero. The whole group cracked up, leading to a lot of pushing and shoving to keep everyone from somersaulting off Zeus's Fist. "Just give me a sec . . ."

Leo backed to the edge of the clearing, where he proceeded to squint at the steepest side of the boulders and draw lines in the air. As far as Rachel could tell, he was calculating some stuff, which didn't look very accurate to her.

"Well?" Piper asked impatiently.

"Hang on." Leo drew something that seemed suspiciously like a bonfire and a bucket, presumably of tar, followed by a stick figure. Rachel snickered, earning looks from everyone else that couldn't see what her art-wired brain was processing.

"For the hate of cereal, jump off the cliff already!" Nico turned the puppy dog eyes on Piper. "Make him do it please? I wanna watch him burn."

"Sadist," Connor muttered.

Annabeth glared at Percy accusingly. "Did you let him watch another horror movie the last time he stayed over? I thought I told you to keep an eye on him! And by keeping an eye on him I meant keep him away from those terrible influences. He's going to become a serial killer if you keep this up."

Rachel rolled her eyes as Percy dragged her between him and Annabeth as a shield. "Would you rather he watch _Night at the Museum_ or something that lame?"

"_Night at the Museum_ actually has some educational value."

"I thought you said half the facts are historically incorrect," Percy sulked. "And if it were up to you, he'd be watching _Twilight_."

"Perseus Jackson, you had better believe I heard that." Annabeth adjusted the knife holster on her bicep meaningfully. "Or you're seaweed and sushi."

"I'd like to kill cereal," Nico volunteered innocently, looking about as innocent as Mrs. O'Leary after she went through a hot dog vendor's cart.

"Score!" Leo gave him a high-five.

"You do know that a cereal killer isn't the same thing as a serial killer, right?" Travis asked, looking seriously concerned for Nico's mental health, although for entirely wrong reasons.

"Pfft. 'Course I do. But killing cereal is better than killing people," Nico explained.

"Actually," Katie shot him a disapproving look, "cereal provides fiber and nutrition, which you definitely need more of. What do you even eat for breakfast?"

Nico stared at her, wide-eyed. "You sound like Grandma Demeter . . ."

"I do _not_!" Katie objected. "Wait, I don't, right?" she asked her boyfriend imploringly. Travis immediately nodded vigorously.

"Uh huh. Yeah. Totally. Long live cereal and all other grains with . . . stuff."

"You guys are about to miss the show, y'know," Rachel said mildly over her shoulder, turning around and shifting into a cross-legged position, facing the steepest drop of Zeus's Fist. "Be glad I'm nice enough to tell you."

"What, that I'm about to be shoved off a cliff?" Leo planted his hands on his hips in a surprisingly defiant pose for someone balancing on the edge of a nearly vertical fifteen-foot rock face. "I was hoping you'd forget about that, and I could make my great escape and risk having my head mounted next to the boar on Cabin Five," he informed the group in general.

"When'd you get up there?" Connor asked, only just realizing what was going on.

"When I marched him up. He's surprisingly heavy for a skinny sixteen-year-old guy." Piper, who was standing behind Leo, gave him a couple of pokes to the ribs.

"It's muscle," Leo said proudly.

Nico leaned forward. "Where?"

"Y'know, I once heard Frank say that his grandma told him it's good to have chicken muscle," Percy said thoughtfully. "In Chinese," he clarified. "I mean, if you translate it from Chinese, it means chicken muscle. Or something along those lines. At least, that's what Frank said. Sorta."

"Chicken muscle?" the Stolls asked in unison, stifling identical sniggers. Rachel exchanged smirks with Annabeth and Katie. Nico just looked like he wished he'd stayed in Italy with his pizza.

"Something about that being dense and heavier than fat, so you're like fat without looking fat." Percy waved a hand vaguely. "Hey, Leo? Anytime today would be nice."

"What, you'd rather watch me and my suicide committing rather than go and beat off the _evil_ Ares clones out for my blood?" Leo crossed his arms indignantly.

"Your blood, not mine," Percy reminded him with a grin.

"Come on, Valdez, let's get you off that fifteen foot cliff so you can prove your non-chicken-ness!" Piper said brightly. "And as a bonus, if you die, you won't have to worry about having your head mounted on Cabin Five's door!"

"I wonder if he can prove he has chicken muscle by jumping . . ." Travis mused, completely off topic. "'Cause then he wouldn't be a chicken, right? Wait, that's backwards."

"Ow! That was my foot, moron!" Piper suddenly clutched the injured appendage and hopped around precariously, nearly trampling Rachel. She and Annabeth reached out at the same time to steady Piper, but only succeeded in jerking the daughter of Aphrodite in opposite directions. Piper wobbled, somehow managing to kick Leo with her injured foot, which was still raised in the air. A noise that sounded like a cross between a girly scream and a cat's face being yanked out of a plunger announced that Leo had been sent off the precipice.

"Don't–!"

"Flame o-PDUH!"

A loud and ominous thudding followed.

Once the dust and smoke had cleared, Rachel skittered down the gentler slope of the rocks like she was snowboarding, closely followed by Piper and Katie. The former had a bit of trouble, and ended up sliding on the avalanche of loose pebbles Rachel had set off.

"Leo!"

"Are you okay?"

"Moron!"

"He's breathing," Nico announced, having taken the short way down and just jumped.

"Corth I'b breathing, thupid," Leo said thickly, clambering to his feet and holding a hand to his mouth. Nico reached out to steady him as he swayed on his feet.

"What happened?" Piper made her way over to Leo's other side, wincing a little at every other step. "Gods, Leo, do you, like, store nuts and bolts in your _shoes_? I'd think that your army jacket's enough."

"Doh not." Leo spat out a mouthful of bright red blood that contrasted sharply with the patchy grass. He grimaced. "Bih my thung."

"Bit your what?" Connor asked, sniggering.

"Bit his _tongue_," Rachel said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "When Piper kicked him. Life lesson, folks: When falling off extremely short cliffs, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to yell anything on the way down, or even open your mouth. I thought you guys already learned that from the Great Climbing Wall Lava Incident last year."

"It was an accident!" Piper objected. "Besides, if he hadn't stomped on my foot, I wouldn't have been hopping around in the first place."

Travis frowned. "I seem to remember it starting with Percy shooting some satyr in the tail and then denying it when he almost got squished by the walls."

"Talking about Leo's tongue accident, genius." Piper flexed her foot. "Hey, anybody got nectar?"

Leo made a bunch of agitated hand movements involving his mouth, Piper's foot, and a giant 'X'. "Nnngh!"

Katie sighed, digging around in her pockets and extracting a slightly smushed square of ambrosia. "When you have Travis as your boyfriend, you learn to be prepared." She handed the godly food to Leo. "Sorry, I only have one. You guys'll have to share it."

"Yeah," Connor drawled, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "_Share_ it."

"Shaddup," Leo mumbled, breaking the square in half and gingerly placing one piece in his mouth. He handed the other half to Piper. "Mm, that's better. I really should start bringing the Rambo food with me everywhere." Piper hopped up and down on both feet a couple times and aimed a kick at Leo just to be sure, nodding in satisfaction.

Rachel started back up to her spot on the boulders, only to find Percy and Annabeth locked in a weird scuffle of sorts over pen-Riptide, with Annabeth digging her knuckles into Percy's scalp and Percy holding onto her for balance, laughing all the while. Somehow they managed not to tumble off the rocks and play tug-of-war vigorously with a ballpoint pen at the same time, something only Percy and Annabeth could ever manage to pull off.

Deciding that starting a collection of bruises wasn't worth sitting next to her best friends, Rachel settled down near Nico, who raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Enjoying this game so far?"

"Oh yeah," she said, gesturing above her. "Time of my life."

"Y'know, we've only gotten through one dare," Nico observed. "Are these things always this slow-moving? Because if they are, I'm changing my vote to Twister."

Rachel hummed in consideration. "I think the whole demigod package deal has something to do with it. Why, you'd rather smell people's feet than watch Leo 'bigh hith thung'?" she mimicked. "Or are you just afraid of dares?"

"I _am_ afraid of dares. Especially that Dare," Nico said, pointing at her. "It's pure evil. Don't you remember how many quests you've sent me on?"

"No."

"Well, there was that one time where you sent me to France to get some special paints and whatnot, and an _empousai _stalked me to the Louvre. Plus that other time when you made me fetch you a cappuccino, and I nearly died because of it."

"Oh yeah . . . it was a really good cappuccino." Rachel's stomach growled in protest of thinking about coffee, having been deprived of food since lunch. "Listen up, people!" she called, climbing to her feet. All heads turned to her, Travis losing his thumb war with Katie because of it. "Who's hungry?"

There was a chorus of groans and "Me!"s. Rachel nodded. "Leo, your turn."

"Wait, what?" Leo looked up from his (literally) heated debate with Piper, confusion etched across his face. "How'd you get from hungry to my turn?"

"_Weeell_," Rachel stretched out the word, planting her hands on her hips, "what usually happens is after the daree finishes the dare, they get to truth or dare the next poor victim – uh, person."

Leo perked up. "Awesome! I get to make someone do whatever I want? Like, hang them from a tree by their ankles and dress them up as Barbies?" He grinned not-very-subtly at Piper, rubbing his hands together.

"You really should have gone over the rules of the game beforehand, Rach." Annabeth tightened her ponytail and chucked Riptide back at Percy. "And maybe an idea of where this is going."

"Hey, I said Leo would jump off a high place, didn't I?" Rachel shot back. "And no, you have to pick someone other than your dare-er, or you guys could just be beating each other up all day," she said to Leo, who slumped and stuck out his bottom lip comically.

"That's not as much fun."

"Rachel . . ." Percy frowned at her. "What kind of demigod-risking plan are you coming up with now?"

"One that'll solve our starvation issue," she said mildly.

"Oh, I get it!" Travis said suddenly. He carefully edged along the rock to where Leo was sitting and whispered something in his ear. Leo grinned and fist bumped him.

"Nico," he said, swiveling around at a perilous angle to face the son of Hades. "Truth or dare?"

Nico's eyes flicked to Travis suspiciously, then to Rachel, who mouthed 'chicken' at him. "Dare," he said slowly.

"Go to the kitchens and swipe us some food." Leo rubbed his stomach. "I'm starving to death."

"Drama queen," Piper murmured.

Nico eyed him skeptically. "Is there some sort of catch here?" he finally asked.

"Nope," Travis answered. "No catch at all."

Suddenly Nico relaxed and shrugged, though his dark eyebrows were still raised. "Alright then. If you're sure." He hopped off Zeus's fist and stared for the bushes, taking each step carefully and glancing over his shoulder at them. "What?"

"Nothing," Rachel promised, flashing a smile. "Absolutely nothing at all."

Once Nico was safely out of hearing range, Percy shook his head defeatedly and looked around at them all. "He's screwed, you know."

"We know," Katie assured him. "But on the bright side, if he pulls this one off we'll have food for our little stakeout."

Rachel slapped her forehead. "Aw, man! I should've told him to get me a cappuccino while he's at it."

**I think this is the point where crap gets spewed. I have this odd habit of Making Things Up As I Go Along and Never Writing Everything Out Before Posting... Yeah.**


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